


to better times and brighter days

by briony_larkin



Series: if we go down, then we go down together [3]
Category: The Tudors (TV)
Genre: F/M, jane isnt awful no worries, names were changed bc i can, what is this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 18:06:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10667973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/briony_larkin/pseuds/briony_larkin
Summary: listen, if you thought henry was gonna let cromwell get away with that.... um, no.which means lawyers. duh.





	to better times and brighter days

**Author's Note:**

> turns out, there might possibly be more of this verse than anticipated. if u know anything about the way i write, u should not be surprised. shame on u, really.
> 
> minor edits 1/12/18

I smooth my pomegranate-red dress over my stomach and send up a silent prayer that I don’t look too obviously pregnant. I’m at about three months, and all my clothes are starting to fit a little strangely. I need to tell Henry, I know, but I just... can’t. I am not yet desperate enough to use any means necessary to keep him at my side. I don't think I would ever be.

It's only been two weeks since I came home. True, he's been sweet and attentive in every conceivable-- mmm, different word... _possible_ way. But it's a sweetness I don't yet trust, the sweetness of cotton candy or sugar-spun glass, a confection that could disappear all-too-easily.

He wants to stay with me regardless of a child that, as far as he is concerned, does not exist. He wants to stay with me for me. It is evident, and my excuses and time are running out.

A huff of frustration leaves me. Surely my chest hasn't grown so much that I am unable to lift my arms up and fix my hair.

There's a knock on the door and Henry comes in. “Are you almost ready...?” His voice trails off as he sees my struggle. “Hey,” he says softly, and he comes to stand behind me and gently takes the comb from my hand. “Let me?“

He combs my black curls into a knot on top of my head. “Bobby pins?”

I silently hand him a handful of them. “Well, I’m glad Margaret made you learn how to do her hair.”

He chuckles, deep and low. I feel the vibrations in his chest against my back. “She always told me that it would come in handy if I had a girlfriend or a daughter. She never seemed to think it possible I could manage to have both.”

A pained smile graces my lips. Could he have both? My heartstrings chime in harmony with the chord he had struck within me. The melody picks at the corners of my eyes, and tears well in them.

Henry finishes with my hair and comes to stand in front of me. “Here, “ he says, and he hands me a little velvet box, midnight blue and simultaneously soft and rough against my skin, in that way only velvet can manage. I open it and gasp at the earrings that lay against the fabric, sparkling just like the stars in the sky.

I look up at him, and certainly those stars are in my eyes now. Love, deep bright red and overwhelming, washes over me, a wave threatening to sweep me out to sea.

“I know this isn't going to be easy for you today. They're going to need to speak to us alone, probably. I thought this might make it easier for you, to have a reminder of me with you.”

I quickly fasten the diamond studs in my ears. “I love you,” I tell him without really meaning to. His breath catches, of course out does. It's the first time I've told him that since the hospital, since before that, even.

“I love you too.” He strokes my cheek, and I lean into his hand. His fingers brush down past my ear and he cups the back of my neck. Them he smiles and tells me, “And if there's a portrait of a monster, I'll make sure to sit on the other side of it.”

*****

“Ms. Boleyn,” a rather disdainful voice says, “could you tell us the events that led up to your, er, _stay_ in the hospital?”

My eyebrows shoot up. Quite a way to phrase that. “Well, someone tried to strangle me.”

“I suppose that's a good place to begin.” The woman sitting across from me marks a note down. “Could you please tell us who strangled you?”

I rub at my temples and say patiently, “You know who strangled me. He's in custody.”

“We do have him in custody,” the man next to her tells me. “However, we need to make our case as airtight as possible. Your cooperation and full explanation would be invaluable.”

The woman gestures at me with her pen. Absentmindedly, I wonder if it gives her a headache to have her hair pulled back that tightly. “Ms. Boleyn, please continue.”

There seems to be a quality deeply innate to my being that rebels at the mere idea of “doing what I am told.” Restraining myself from telling them to fuck off with great difficulty, I explain, “It was definitely not Henry. I know it was answered as a domestic violence incident at first, but it wasn’t Henry.”

The woman hums and looks down through tiny glasses resting on the end of her nose to make yet another note. “And could you tell us how you know it wasn’t your... boyfriend?”

Something about her tone of voice when she pronounces the word “boyfriend,” like its very sound is disdainful to her, rankles me. So I snap, “Well, I’ve had his hands around my neck before, and they’re a little less calloused and a bit bigger.”

The woman’s eyebrows shoot up to her sleek hairline. “I’m sorry?”

“Are you admitting to an instance of domestic violence?” the man asks incredulously.

“No,” I say bluntly. “His hands have been around my neck during sex.” I give the lawyers a nasty smile and clarify unnecessarily, "We're into that."

I swear, the lady almost chokes on her own spit, and ice blue red hot satisfaction blooms within me at the obvious scandal I’ve caused her ladyship. The man only raises his eyebrows and says noncommittally, “Ah. I see.”

“And I saw his eyes, a little, in the reflection of the window-- before I passed out. Henry’s eyes are blue. His were black. He was paler than Henry, too.”

“Thank you for that information, Ms. Boleyn. Now, what led you to the belief that Thomas Cromwell was behind the attack on your person?” The man looks calmly at me, dark brown eyes boring into my very soul, it would seem.

My hand comes up to tug gently at my ear. The pull somewhere between only pressure and pain gives me strange comfort. Henry is there. Henry loves me. I take a deep breath. “He has hated me almost since the moment we met. Our beliefs, opinions, and personalities are very, very different. He wanted to influence Henry to do things that would be good for Cromwell. He felt like my influence pushed Henry away from what he wanted. He was jealous.”

“All very good information, thank you, Ms. Boleyn,” the man says, and his deep voice calms me a little. He doesn’t seem to have the contempt for me that the woman does. “That is evidence of animosity, which is useful. Have you ever had an argument with Mr. Cromwell that someone else witnessed?”

“Oh, definitely. He yelled at me in front of my sister Mary, Henry’s sister Margaret, my friend Liza, and Henry himself at one point.”

“And he initiated the arguments?” the man clarifies.

“Pretty much every time,” I nod. My hands ball into fists at the memory, and I don’t want to tell them, but I know I need to. “He raised his hand like he would hit me when we fought in front of Mary and Margaret.”

The man’s eyebrows shoot up. I don’t think the woman’s eyebrows have come down from her hairline from the second I mentioned sex. “Would Mary and Margaret be willing to testify about that in court?”

“Of course.” They will, too. Margaret has visited almost every day since, and she’s told me that several times. Mary is planning a visit in the summer, and she’s called lots. She volunteered to help in any way possible in her last call. She maybe hadn’t envisioned testifying, but too bad.

“I’m afraid we still don’t have very solid evidence that he would hire a hitman against you or anything that extreme,” the woman says.

I grit my teeth. I’d really hoped to avoid this at all cost, but it looks like I’ll have to... “Well, something changed.”

A beat of silence passes. I’m reluctant to elaborate without prompting-- probably because the woman (what on earth is her name?) is the one who said something.

“What changed?” the man asks.

I bite at my bottom lip, cutting rose-red color into the white skin. “My relationship with Henry was going through a rough patch. Cromwell thought it would end and Henry would move on to a certain girl who wouldn’t be a bad influence like me. He was content to wait it out. Then...” I don’t want to say it don’t want to but I have to, I have to, I have to. “Then I found out I was pregnant. He found out too, and he knew that if Henry knew, he would never leave me. Even if he did, our baby would bind us permanently and make my influence a factor for the rest of our lives. He tried to convince me to abort, and when I told him no, he tried to bribe me to disappear. But that didn’t work either.”

The man is silent, and I have the distinct impression I have shocked him. No such luck with the woman.

“How did he find out that you were pregnant?”

I’ve been dreading this question. I don’t really know the answer. I have my suspicions, of course, but none of them are solid.

Then, there’s a quiet whisper of a voice, a voice I recognize. She tells me exactly how he knew. “Cromwell has a whole network of spies. One of them was my personal assistant. She scheduled a doctor’s appointment for me with the best obstetrician in Boston. She was no idiot, of course, and neither is Cromwell. They knew exactly what it had to mean.”

The woman hums and makes a note on her little pad for what feels like the billionth time. “And it’s certainly true that the man arrested for your attempted murder has the credentials to potentially be a hitman. Ex-marine, discharged dishonorably from the military for not following orders and suspected, unproven torture. He will likely plead insanity as a result of PTSD, but you don’t care, do you?”

“Excuse me?” Is that an insult? I don’t know. I don’t like not knowing things.

“You have bigger fish to fry. His sentence is irrelevant. You care about getting Cromwell behind bars. Isn’t that true?”

I still don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, but I don’t think it matters. What matters is what’s true. “Yes.”

“So who can give us enough proof to put him behind bars, even temporarily?” she asks.

“The man who tried to kill me. What's his name?”

“Robert Mitchell.”

“You'd think you would remember that name of the man who attempted to murder you, “ the woman comments, looking at me curiously.

I shrug. “I'm bad with names.”

“How are we going to get evidence of Cromwell’s involvement?” the man mutters.

I don't really think he was talking to me, but I answer anyway. “Mitchell will implicate Cromwell if we give him a plea deal. He doesn't deal in hard copies of anything, but I'll bet there's a withdrawal from Cromwell's account that corresponds with a deposit to Mitchell's.” Again, I am certain of everything I am saying. Anne is telling me everything. I can hear her voice as surely as I can hear the man across from me.

He asks, “Ms. Boleyn, did you ever consider going into law, or criminal justice work, perhaps?” I shake my head. “Well, that was quite clever. I am sure you're right. If all goes well, we ought to have Mitchell on trial by September. We'll need you present at several more meetings, of course.”

“Of course.” I sit there, looking at the two lawyers, one dark and warm, one white and cold, a perfect yin and yang.

“I'm Susan Parker, and that's Anthony Cranmer,” the woman-- Susan-- says, pointing at the man next to her. “Just in case you've forgotten.”

Anthony smiles kindly, white teeth flashing. “You can call me Tony.”

I nod. Then I manage a smile and tell him, “You can call me Anne.”

*****  
The second he sees me, Henry shoots out of his chair and almost falls over. A tiny smile graces my lips. “Hey, sweetheart. You good?” He wraps an arm around my waist and presses a kiss to my temple.

“Yeah,” I tell him, smiling, but it's a fragile, trembling thing. “I'm good.”

He carefully escorts me into the elevator, down to the ground floor, where his driver is waiting at the door. I know there's something burning the edge of his tongue, but he says nothing.

I am grateful. I need the time to gather my thoughts, to decide how to say what I must.

Neither of us say another word until we are (safely) alone in our apartment. He keeps hold of my hand, though, stroking it with his thumb periodically. His watch is gold against my skin, looking like a ray of sunshine against white tile, but cold in a way it shouldn’t be.

“Do you want me to make lunch?” Henry rubs my back, palm digging into stiff muscles.

It's like a giant eggroll wallops me over the head. “Chinese. Order Chinese,” I command. He raises his eyebrows and heads into the kitchen to find a takeout menu. So that might have been a dramatic change in mood, but I don't really care. Baby wants Chinese, which means I want Chinese, and I have a kind of history of getting what I want.

A baby... it's stopped being an abstract concept and started to become much more concrete. I can see our spare room, transformed into a nursery, a baby cradle in one corner and a rocking chair in another. I move to look out the window, watching the sun glint coldy off of silver steel buildings and smile warmly at children on the playground, and I can see a baby toddling toward me on the grass, arms outstretched. I can see Henry, months before that, holding a tiny bundle swaddled in my family's antique prayer shawl.

And he would. He'd be there. He'd love our child with all his heart.

Suddenly, I am not afraid.

Henry says, “Hey,” the word rumbling in his chest. He gives me plenty of time to anticipate him walking up behind me before he places gentle hands on my hips.

I place my hands over his and slowly move them further around me to rest at the base of my stomach. “Hey,” I whisper, “I've got something to tell you.”

“Yeah?”

“I'm pregnant.”

**Author's Note:**

> yeah, anne is jewish. reform jewish, specifically. moderately practicing. if you're surprised, trust me, i am too. i didn't know it was happening until i wrote it. anyway, enjoy the trash. there will be more. (mwahahahaha)


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